1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, and, more particularly, to a method for mapping a source gamut to a destination gamut.
2. Description of the related art.
In recent years, the use of computers for home and business purposes has increased significantly. Most computer systems incorporate the use of a computer monitor and a printer. Users frequently display images on the computer monitor, including scanned images, photos downloaded from the internet, or from a digital camera, as well as images created or modified by the user with various application software products that are available to businesses and consumers alike. Users of ten wish to reproduce such images on a printer. However, the reproduced image may not satisfactorily represent the image as displayed on the computer monitor. This is because the color gamut of one system, such as a computer monitor or a scanner, is different than the color gamut of another system, such as a printer. For example, a computer monitor generally can produce a much larger gamut than a printer. To effectively reproduce computer monitor colors with a printer, gamut mapping must be performed, in which the out-of-gamut colors of the computer monitor are mapped into the printer gamut boundary. Various gamut-mapping methods have been proposed. However, because these methods do not provide an efficient control for changes of colors during gamut mapping, some printed colors experience “wash-out” due to over-compression of the gamut, and other colors will not transition smoothly, but rather will experience “blocking.”
What is needed in the art is a gamut mapping method that effectively controls the change of colors from the source gamut to the destination gamut so as to reduce the wash-out and blocking of colors in the printed output.